Built to last: don’t be a Flash in the pan

You heard the phrase “flash in the pan” before, right? 

Maybe it's kind of dated, but it’s usually said with a smirk—a cautionary jab at the one hit wonders. But it can apply to companies as well, the kind that burn bright… and burn out. It’s a warning for leaders who chase speed, hype, or headcount at the expense of something far more important: durability.

What “flash in the pan” means to me... 

When I hear “flash in the pan” however, I can’t help but smile. Why? Because my first company was called Flash. Well, technically my first product. 

I was 13. My Dad was an entrepreneur and our form of “quality time” was sitting at the breakfast table, over coffee, coming up with business ideas and talking about motivation and psychology. 

He owned a stainless steel cookware company called United Cookware and was brimming with ideas that were tangential to the details of how people interacted with its products. 

Sidenote: if you know me and my whole history, United Cookware was responsible for creating, manufacturing and bringing the original Unimatic coffee pots into the world. The ones that I would later find a secret stash of after his sudden passing, creating what the world now knows as ​Caffé Unimatic​— my coffee company. It’s widely known thanks to the Netflix documentary "Coffee For All" or "Caffé Sospeso." 

Anyway, back to the story... for kicks, Dad and I decided to create a stainless steel cookware cleaner together that could make any pan, no matter how scorched, spotless. 

He gave me the reins: test it, name it, trademark it, design the packaging, write the verbiage for the label, do price research, call potential distributors. I did everything but bottle the stuff. And the cleaner worked! It took your pan from blackened to sparkly, like a "flash in the pan." That phrase is why I chose the name “Flash.” 

So, yes, the term makes me smile, BUT—if someone’s saying that about your business, it’s NOT a compliment.

Built to last 

Let’s be honest, you don’t want your company to be a one-hit wonder. 

You didn’t push your people this hard, do this much work, this much innovation, scale this fast or sacrifice like you have just to fizzle out. 

You’re playing the long game—the infinite game, as my teammate Simon Sinek puts it. You want (client and employee) retention, massive impact, lasting legacy. You want to go the distance and build a sustainable, generational business that every stakeholder involved with it can be proud of. 

BUT

Here’s the thing, too many companies in your shoes scale like wildfire… and then collapse under the weight of their own growth. They miss the early signs. They don’t realize they’re sinking until it’s too late. 

️SO, what does it look like? First…

They raise money, maybe a lot of it 

They increase marketing spend and show crazy growth 

They hire quickly to keep up with demand

They grow and grow and grow 

Maybe they win awards or even make a list like the Inc. 5000 

From the outside, it all looks shiny and impressive and like everything is going to plan, but...

Beneath the surface things are starting to deteriorate:

Scale puts more and more pressure on the team, there’s a LOT going on 

Lots of competing priorities, constant changes, new initiatives, stops and starts… creating what I call “startup whiplash” 

Complexity doubles, triples 

People are wearing multiple hats and spreading themselves thin 

Cross functional communication gets sticky 

Initiatives get assigned, work gets done but then forgotten about, bottlenecked or stuck in the system before it can see the light of day

People don’t push back or say “no, I can’t take on more thing”, they just keep saying yes… because, everyone else is, right? 

All nighters or working through the weekend starts to become the norm 

Morale suffers. It just doesn’t feel like it used to 

People are frustrated, but they believe in the mission so they keep plugging along

And then…

The product begins to suffer

Work is getting done, but the caliber is never stellar, it’s just ok (but you can’t create a new category or be a household name with just ok)… 

Client retention starts to decline 

Employee retention follows 

High performers are either leaving or burning out and disengaging

People start to wonder "why am I here?"

Now, you might be shrinking faster than you’re growing and everything speeds up more

Executives put on happy faces and say things like “we’re building the plane as we’re flying it” 

They might even comment negatively about people who leave, saying “they weren’t good fit anyway” or my personal favorite “they weren’t cutout for this” 

Executives know how swamped everyone is but still say "we JUST have to focus on this one new initiative" (initiative #97379399470873)

Employees use words like toxic when asked confidentially about culture (they don’t want to be overtly negative)

No one wants to admit it, but there’s an elephant in the room—everything’s a fire drill, no one seems ok, making people wonder: is everything actually ok?

Does even one of those things apply to your organization? 

The bad news 

The bad news is that these are the signs that you’re walking your team off what I call “the culture cliff.” Unaddressed, this could be the beginning of the end. 

The good news 

Here’s the good news. The research shows that we can link so much of this back to one specific thing— your leaders aren’t growing as fast as your business. 

They know the operations side of how to scale the company, but they don’t know how to navigate the human complexities that come along with it. Often they don’t even realize that there will be human complexities. After all, their education is in whatever skill they used in the day job that got them promoted. Most often, they haven’t studied leadership, people or communication intensely. Amiright?!

More good news! 

This is when BRAVE® shines. It gives your team a framework to master the human side of scaling—the part most leaders don’t get trained for. Because it’s one thing to grow a company. It’s another to grow people at the same speed. And yes, it works fast and can turn the ship around.

We've had clients tell us things like:

"Our culture was at it's breaking point, people had no hope, but you turned it around quickly and gave our team something to fight for..."

"Our top performer was interviewing for other jobs, but you helped us not just keep her but promote her to partner..."

"BRAVE created an immediate 20-30% increase in productivity, with more to come. It will help us avoid problems or resolve them faster...”

"The ROI of BRAVE is endless. These are the kinds of leadership trainings that companies should really be spending money on. There's nothing our team can't tackle..."

But what happens when you don’t pay attention to scaling your culture alongside your business? 

You leave your best talent behind. You micromanage. You bottleneck. You never hear your teams’ best ideas or innovations. YOU become the problem. I know it’s hard to hear, but if you can bring yourself to get curious, this might be the wake up call or pep talk (however you’d like to frame it) that you needed more than anything. You play a role in this. You CAN make a difference and turn it all around. 

Want to be a generational company? 

Protect your greatest asset: your people. Make sure your culture is one that can withstand growth, change and challenge. Make sure it’s durable. 

And remember, your culture starts with your conversations. 

Every single conversation your people have is saving you or killing you. 

They need the tools and awareness to get them right. That takes foresight. Structure. And a language for high-performance leadership that’s simple, scalable, and human.

BRAVE® is that language.

I designed it so you don’t end up being a flash in the pan.

So you don’t lose your edge. 

Or your clients. 

Or your people. 

Or everything you’ve worked so hard for. 

Bravely, 

Elisabeth 

P.S. If any of the above applies to you, send us an email and be the first to know about our new culture diagnostic, called The Culture Cliff® Diagnostic. It’s designed to catch the early cultural warning signs of eroding trust, clarity and performance, before they slow you down and turn into burnout, churn, or missed goals.